Bonding quality evaluation of wind turbine blades by pulsed thermography

Abstract

The glue defects of the wind turbine blades which are composed of the glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) composite plates make its strength greatly reduced, so security issues could be caused. To improve the safety of wind turbine blades, nondestructive testing technique using pulsed thermography is being investigated in this study. The results of ultrasonic C scan test were compared with the results of thermography. The current results indicated that both methods can successfully detect two gluing situations. However, the inspect specimens need to be putted in the water in the detection process by ultrasonic C scan, and the detection time lasts much longer than pulsed thermography. And in situ applications, the measured wind turbine blades are normally in the size of several tens meter, and also only one side is available for the inspection especially at the tip of blades. Thus, ultrasonic C scan of current experimental setup is not suitable for the applications in the field. Pulsed thermography is not necessary to contact with inspected specimens. The infrared results by pulsed thermography indicate that the shape and size of deficiency glue defects in the specimens show good agreement with the real situation, so it is more suitable for the inspection in the field. The preliminary results in this study indicate that pulse thermography can be used to detect glue faults of GFRP which are not too thick.